Voting for the 2017 Tom Racine Award — the fans' choice for the most valuable player of the Vermont Lake Monsters — begins today. It is the 22nd year for the MVP award sponsored by the Burlington Free Press and FreePressMedia.

Jim Fogler, president of the Burlington Free Press, said the newspaper will award a pair of 2018 Lake Monsters season tickets to a voting fan in a random drawing from the submitted ballots.

The award is scheduled to be presented Aug. 26 when the Lake Monsters play Aberdeen at 6 p.m.

The award is named for Racine, the team's former general manager who helped bring minor league baseball back to Burlington in the mid-1980s and again in the mid-1990s. Racine, a longtime downtown business owner and community leader, died in January 1996.